


Peregrinations

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, Great Hiatus, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: In the foothills of the Himalayas, Holmes struggles to write a letter he will never send.





	Peregrinations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ValdaVermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValdaVermillion/gifts).



My Dear Watson,

Please forgive me

 

_You have begun this letter countless time and never made it past these six, simpering, insufficient words. The blankness of the page that follows yawns wide across the leather traveling trunk. Crinkled, off-white paper, folded and refolded. You gaze at it as if into a fog-colored abyss. Does it much matter what one writes in a letter when one doesn’t intend to post it? A pointless exercise. Nevertheless, you are compelled. Seize the pen! Take a breath! Try again:_

 

My Dear Watson,

Please forgive me if this letter comes as a shock. You have been, I’m told, toiling under the assumption that I met my end on that fateful day in Switzerland. Unfortunately, I did not.

I am living, as much as one can call it that, in a squalid little hut somewhere between Kathmandu and Simla. I am not much at liberty to discuss the reason for my visit, suffice it to say that I am laboring, at the request of my brother, for Queen and country.

 

_Stop there! Too trite. And too secretive. A confession comprised mainly of further concealment, isn’t much of a confession, is it? Poor Watson, how astonished he would be by the truths you’ve buried. Secrets, secrets, secrets, deep, down to the bone, into the core where dwells a man so wretched, so different from “the best and wisest man” he imagines to have known._

_The canvas flap across the doorframe shudders. It’s the wind picking up again. Rushing through the mountain passes. The wind, with long, spindly fingers, like needles of cold. Damn the elevation—that’s why the coffee boils before it’s hot. You prod the fire. The wind spits smoke in your face._

_You look again at what you’ve written. No, this won’t do. Cross it out. Start again._

 

My Dear Watson,

Please forgive me for not taking you into my confidences sooner. Please know it was never my intention to deceive you. Whatever grief you felt at the loss of me—and I hope it was not too great—know that I grieved, too, for the loss of your companionship, and your trust. It is my sincerest wish that these losses be, as was yours of me, but temporary.

What may I tell you of my life since that fateful day at Reichenbach? I have done much you would find wondrous, but very little you would find interesting. At first, my only concern was to blot out the rest of Moriarty’s horde, and to do so while increasing the distance between yourself and danger. I know, my dear boy, you should have stared into the very face of death, had I asked it of you. That is precisely the reason I could never ask…

I travelled East, across the Great Hungarian Plain, through the Balkans, to Constantinople. From there, it was easy enough to board a ship bound for Bombay. I let myself become lost in the farthest reaches of the Empire. I had seen neither hide nor hair of Moriarty’s gang since leaving Europe. It is not difficult for a man to disappear here. And so, I did precisely that.

For weeks, I roamed the Raj, through the Hindu Kush, and into lands which I had only known from your descriptions. I have seen it now, with my own eyes. I have smelled the mountain air, crisp with morning, and tinted with juniper. I felt the pitiless sun against my back, drank sour goat’s milk, listened to the call of the _muezzin._ How beautiful this land is, how pitiless.

I walked through two pairs of English-made boots, and three sets of Kolhapuri _chappals._ I lost count of the miles, the days, the months. Across arid plains, through thickets of jungle brush, from great Mughal cities, to villages that are little more than a man and his cow, I walked. With every step, I imagined you beside me—felt the empty air where your companionship should have been. My dear, dear Watson—

When the monsoons came, I found myself in Calcutta with little more than the clothes on my back and tuppence to my name. Destitution stared at me, hard and ugly. In desperation, I wrote to Mycroft. He sent a little money, news of you, and promises of how I might use my self-imposed exile for the benefit of the Crown. Intelligence acquisition, foreign diplomacy: stimulation for my mind, which I have all but let atrophy.

That is how, my dear Watson, I come to find myself in this hiding place at the foot of the Himalayas. My quarters are not unlike that Neolithic hut I used on Dartmoor to observe your wardship of Sir Henry Baskerville. Do you recall that case, Watson? I deceived you then as I am deceiving you still. What I shouldn’t give to come upon one of your cigarette ends now! To return here one evening and find you taking aim at me with your revolver. Perhaps this time I would not even stay your hand. Shoot me through the heart and I should die happy, just to see your face once more. My dear—

 

_No, no! Do not go on from there. Set down the pen. The words run together on the page. Your vision is clouding, swirling before you in wet drops. The damn smoke again._

_The coffee is boiling proper, now; not just loud, but hot. Gingerly, you test the long handle of the_ cezve. _It, too, is hot, but not enough to burn. You pull the copper pot from the flames and let it rest on your blanketed lap, the warmth of it seeping into you. You no longer bother with cups, instead, you bring the pot to your mouth and drink the coffee straight from its lip. You relish the bitterness of it, the grit of the grounds, the singe against the back of your throat, the acid burn in the pit of your stomach._

_The wind carries in the distant baying of a hound. The herdsman’s, no doubt. You listen, sifting through the sandy roar of the wind for the cause of the canine’s distress. Gunshots mean bandits. The rumble of thunder, a storm. Nothing could mean anything: an animal caught in a snare, a herdsman’s twisted ankle, a leopard. Nothing. Anything._

_Anything. Nothing._

_You make hatch marks through what you’ve written. Turn the paper over, see how fresh and clean it is, how unmarred by your pathetic attempts. What would you say, if you could say anything? If you feared nothing…_

 

My Dear Watson,

Please forgive me for what I am. I have deceived you from the very start. You have thought of me as your friend, but I have been no more than a charlatan, a wolf in sheepskin, cultivating your friendship for my own gain, as a means to keep you near to me, to fill my life with your company. There is nothing I enjoy so much in this world as your company. For you see, I love you.

Please, do not think me vulgar or sinful; I simply know no better words to describe what I mean. I love you, my dear boy, as I have never known love could be. You took a wild man, whom no one would believe, and showed him he could be important. I was clever, but you made me great. You gave meaning to my life and to my work. You have comforted me, befriended me, cared for me… And even if you had never done a lick for me, I would love you just the same.

Our quiet evenings at Baker Street are more dear to me than all the cases and all the victories I have known. I can see you still, one foot upon the fire grate, slumped in your chair as if half-melted, your cornflower eyes dreamy and distant as you disappear into a book. Sometimes, though there is nothing but air above me and a plate in my hand, I believe I hear the tread of your feet upstairs, or your tuneless humming across the dinner table.

With every step from Switzerland to Tibet, I imagined you with me. I longed to know what you would make of everything. Would you marvel at the sunset along the Ganges? Could you learn to imitate the Oriental magpie as well as you do its European cousin? What would you make of the unfathomable heights of the Himalayas? Could you build this fire so the damned smoke would not blow in our eyes? Would you be proud of what I am doing?

My dear Watson, how terribly I miss you. You shall never know how much it grieved me to leave you there, at the foot of the falls. Nevertheless, I knew I must. Never could I have shared you, as you needed me to share you: with your wife, your practice, your readers of _Strand Magazine_. I am a selfish man and I wanted you all to myself. For, I love you, with all of my heart, with everything that I am, I love you. I love you. I love you.

 

_The wind has died down again. You part the canvas flap and discover snow has fallen, blanketing the ground in great white sheets, which glow pearlescent in the twilight. You suppose it must have been the wind that caused the hound to bark, for now the cries have stopped. The snow-packed silence is deafening and absolute._

_Back inside, the fire pops and crackles, hungry for more fuel. You look at the paper on your traveling trunk. You have obliterated most of its expanse with your pen. Tidy black loops and lines. Lunacy and lies. All that ink and paper and still no closer. There’s some space there—just in the margin. A small square, but big enough for one last attempt. Go on, now. You know precisely what to write:_

 

My Dear Watson,

Please forgive me.

 

_There, that’s it! You’ve got it! Well done. Toss the page onto the fire. See how it twists, how the page ignites in a flash, how it transmogrifies. Now white. Now black with red lace edges. Now grey, like stone. No, grey like fog out the window at Baker Street…_

_Take out another sheet of paper. Take up your pen. Try again._


End file.
